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AP Photo/Gerry Broome, Pool North Carolina Democratic candidate for governor Roy Cooper and his wife Kristin greet supporters during an election night rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Wednesday, November 9, 2016. I n an election that left Democrats with little to crow about, North Carolina offered a handful of bright spots. Mike Morgan, a veteran jurist who in 1964 helped desegregate his local public-school system, flipped the partisan balance of the state Supreme Court by unseating a Republican incumbent. And Attorney General Roy Cooper, who took firm stands against voter suppression and anti-LGBT discrimination, racked up a knife’s-edge lead in the still-undeclared gubernatorial race. With some county results still contested, Cooper is currently 6,470 votes ahead of Republican Governor Pat McCrory, out of almost 4.6 million cast. Now, there’s talk among Republicans of restoring their majority on the Supreme Court by legislative fiat—and concerns that lawmakers might try to...

(Photo: Barry Yeoman) Roy Cooper, North Carolina's likely governor-elect, gives an acceptance speech at the state Democratic Party's election-watch party. B y 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Raleigh ballroom where North Carolina Democrats had earlier been whooping in anticipation of a presidential victory had nearly emptied out. Stragglers were sitting on the floor, eyes fixated on their phones, or yelling back at two large monitors tuned to MSNBC. Earlier, the network had projected a Donald Trump win in North Carolina, a swing state long considered a key to a Hillary Clinton victory. The down-ticket news was equally disheartening. Deborah Ross, the former state ACLU director, had lost her bid to unseat Republican U.S. Senator Richard Burr. The GOP had seized several statewide posts traditionally held by Democrats, including education chief. And Republicans maintained their supermajority in the state legislature, which over the past few years has restricted voting rights, cut school and...

AP Photo/Gerry Broome, Pool Democratic gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Roy Cooper, left, and North Carolina Republican Governor Pat McCrory participate in a live televised debate at UNC-TV studios in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Tuesday, October 11, 2016. I an Palmquist was running errands last Tuesday when the North Carolina gubernatorial debate came on the air. As the 39-year-old gay activist drove around Raleigh, listening to his car radio, he couldn’t help but feel like something in this most purple of Southern states had shifted. Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s four-term attorney general, was bludgeoning Republican Governor Pat McCrory for supporting House Bill 2, the law that forces many transgender women into men’s restrooms, and vice versa, in public buildings. The law, passed in a one-day special session last March and signed that night by McCrory, also handcuffs local governments from safeguarding LGBT civil rights and from setting employment standards...

(AP Photo/The Wilmington Star-News, Jason A. Frizzelle) Campaign Manager Erin Rogers, second right, and Democratic party NC Senate District 9 candidate Elizabeth Redenbaugh, right, watch election results at Ted's Fun on the River in Wilmington, N.C. on Tuesday, November 4, 2014. J ust before 10 p.m. on election night, Debby Dowlin climbed onto the long wooden table at 106 Main, a cocktail bar in Durham, North Carolina. An organizer with Credo SuperPAC —which ran field operations to defeat five Republican candidates for U.S. Senate—Dowlin had been working to prevent Thom Tillis, the state House Speaker, from unseating Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan. “We’re really hoping to clinch that,” she told the bar’s patrons. “We may have different feelings about Kay Hagan”—whose lackluster first Senate term and middle-of-the-road campaign failed to electrify voters. “But it’s good to know we all have a person we absolutely agree cannot be in the Senate. We cannot let the extreme right take over...